Twenty Years Down

Reflections on the Beatles, written 1984.

All you left were your plastic pieces

Cloaked in covers of light and sound,

Whatever happened to spill our leases,

Wreck our passage and check our treaties

Twenty years down?

 

Often I’ve thought of the way you made it

Poked your tongues at the hand-me-downs,

Sang your songs of the maid, and laid it

Track on track, and the way you played it

Close to the ground.

 

And we all laughed at your small perfection

Simple lads in a world of wine,

We caught the spell of your sweet confections,

Song on song of your funny mentions

Of you, of me and mine.

 

The world was well that you had your way in,

Nobody hurt, or suffered or lost,

Nothing we thought that we had no say in,

Love was the word that we thought to play in

That took no count of the cost.

 

But now your shadows lie dim within us

And every laugh has a shattered sound,

Left to the rest of our lives, we spin us

Ever the wake of the dream that in us

Ran aground!

 

David Lewis Paget